


Of A Star

by Rubynye



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: 5 Things, 5+1 Things, F/M, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments between Chris and Beth, plus one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of A Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aderam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aderam/gifts).



> Title modified from Robert Browning's "My Star".  
> This features a quotation from the book, which should be obvious in context.

1) Beth throws her arms wide and spins, floating weightlessly in midair, in space. She's made it to space, finally, _finally_ , after a lifetime of dreaming, after selling her company, after years of training -- she's _here_ , Earth shining luminous blue beyond one window, steady stars scattered across the infinite darkness outside the others. She whirls and the walls flicker, white-blue-white-black, the air flows past her slippered toes and her outspread fingers. She's really here, aboard the _Hermes_ , on her way to Mars.

Blue flickers low at her vision's edge, within a blur of dark and pink and pale. Beth startles and starts to spiral forward, her body remembers her training and her fingers catch a handhold, she jerks herself upright and tenses against momentum. When she's still, more or less, she looks over her shoulder and turns to her crewmate behind her.

Chris Beck looks up at her from the entrance, his wide eyes blue like the Earth outside the window, his tender-looking lips pink and parted. Beth feels a warm prickle in her cheeks, an electric tingle down her nerves, and sternly tells herself to cool it. Chris is good-looking and kind, generous and easygoing, and has never once made the slightest hint of a move on her. 

It's against the regs, after all, and she suspects gratefully that Commander Lewis may have warned the guys off her. But now she hangs there weightlessly, fingers curled around the handhold as she stares at Chris staring up at her, her heart hammering in her chest, and wonders for a flickering moment how she'd feel if he did.

She's just excited, Beth reminds herself. They just embarked today, just changed to regular clothes less than two hours ago, she's only had a handful of minutes to be alone with the viewports and really soak in the weightlessness. "Hey," she forces out, hears her voice shake, and breathes, and tells herself to calm down.

"Hi, um hi," Chris responds, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize--"

"No, it's okay, I was just, the view." Beth waves her free hand at the window, at the white-swirled blue Earth. "I wasn't looking for alone time or anything."

Chris smiles and Beth's heart bangs in her chest. She's seen him smile a hundred times before, so what's her deal? She sternly asks herself, or tries to as he pushes up through the entrance, matching her orientation, face to face. "It's great, isn't it?" he asks, and she nods dumbly. "The Earth's so bright. No matter how many times I get up here I never get tired of it."As he speaks he looks out, the light streaming over his face. He looks like it's shining from inside him too, like he's glowing.

 _That would make a great promo shot_ , Beth makes herself think, ignoring the little tremble right in the pit of her belly. Chris turns back to her with a bright shining smile and for a long vanishingly short moment Beth just looks at him smiling at her as they float in a room awash in Earth's light.

Then he shakes his head, his hair swinging a little. "I should get back to setting up the medbay. I just wanted to grab a little look. You can have the Obs Deck back to yourself again."

That isn't what Beth finds herself wanting right now. "Nah, I should get back to work too," she babbles, and Chris nods as he lowers himself into the entrance. Even through his long sleeves she can see his muscles work, and that's not what she's thinking about as she pushes down, letting go to soar towards the ladder, throwing herself forward like she has so many times before. "I'd love to hear more about it later, though." Chris turns his handsome face back up to her, his mouth a little open. "The other times you looked at Earth from space."

He smiles again, that bright smile across his face, and Beth feels a little ripple of dizziness that has nothing to do with weightlessness. "Absoluetly," he says, and starts down the ladder.

Holding onto the edge of the entrance, Beth watches Chris's dark head recede, swallows hard, and lets herself smile stupidly for just one moment before she swings herself down to the ladder and back to her tasks aboard the _Hermes_.

 

2) The horizon feels closer -- it should, Beth reminds herself, Mars is much smaller -- but the sky is limitless overhead, gray - blue - purple with sunset. She flexes her toes inside boots settled on another planet's dirt, looks up at another planet's sky, and if she turned a precise few degrees she could find her own home planet above her, a bright double star. 

Beth Johanssen is standing on Mars, and she wants to hug herself and jump up and down in glee, triumph surging through her like fresh current. However she's a grown woman, and an astronaut, so she doesn't let herself do a dorky victory dance. She flexes her fingers and makes her arms hang at her sides, tilts her helmeted head up and stares into the sky overhead, the clear cold sky of Mars.

" _Hey_ ," crackles into her earpiece in Chris's warm voice. She turns, back to the little white dome of the Hab framing Chris in his orange and white EVA suit. He bounces up to her -- even the ship's .4 G wasn't quite like Mars's surface -- and when he comes alongside she can see his face through the helmet, see his smile. "Look at that."

"Yeah," Beth says raptly, and then adds, unnecessarily, "We made it. We made it to Mars." Excitement leaks into her voice despite her self-control.

"That we did." Chris glances at her, smiling, and looks out at the sunset again. "Haven't seen any tharks though."

Beth has to catch her breath. "You've read Burroughs?"

Chris nods. "I used to read a ton of SF when I was a kid." The sky is clearing as its color drains, transparent black rising as the blue and purple light recedes. "After I put my name in for this mission I spent a couple months revisiting it all, dreaming of Mars." He chuckles, like he thinks it's silly, thinks she might find it silly.

She feels as connected as if they're holding hands. "I've dreamt of Mars my whole life," she tells Chris, as they stand on the very planet. "I used to have a shelf and an e-reader category just for books about Mars. Podkayne, _Old Fashioned Martian Girl_ , _The Sky So Big and Black_ , and that's just the fiction. It always seemed so near, another planet next door."

"It wasn't quite that close, huh," Chris murmurs, and Beth nods, reminded of how long it took them to travel here, to prepare for the journey. "But here we are, where all those writers just dreamed of being."

"Here we are," Beth murmurs, warm all through, sharing the Martian sunset with Chris. 

"Which ones did you bring?" he asks, and her mood sags. She should've anticipated that question. She could lie, but...

"I didn't bring any," At the edge of her vision Chris looks surprised, but Beth focuses on the horizon. "I didn't -- I wanted the selectors to take me seriously. I didn't want to look... naive. So I left my Martian books behind. Except..." she probably shouldn't mention it, but she wants to tell Chris this, throwing out another feeler. "I brought a few games, you know, computer nerd stuff. Including my favorite from when I was twelve."

"This sounds good," Chris says, a little teasingly, but not mockingly.

"You'd better not laugh," Beth says as firmly as she can, listening to Chris's amused noise, smiling helplessly.

"Of course not," he lies.

She tells him anyway. " _Leather Goddesses of Phobos_." He makes a valiant attempt to squash his laugh into a choked snort, and he's right beside her, so she elbows his arm and he gives in and laughs.

"Sorry, sorry," Chris sputters, and Beth wants to hug him.

"I'll let it slide this time," she says primly, and feels warm inside her suit as his laugh rolls across her ears again.

" _Beck, Johanssen_ ," Commander Lewis's voice crackles into their comms and they both stand at attention. "It's going to get cold out there, don't stay out too much longer."

"Yes, Commander," Chris answers, and the light has almost fully faded. "Guess we might as well." Beth shrugs, turning back, and Chris turns with her. "At least you considered what to bring. I just grabbed the first files I could and now I'm suffering for it."

"What did you pack?" Their shadows stretch across the sand, merging into the darkness around them, the Hab's spinning beacon shining bright and homey just ahead.

"Nothing but the most fascinating of medical journals," Chris says, and they laugh together pretty much the whole way back.

 

3) Beth's legs tremble beneath her, little wisps of chill pull up goose pimples in the shipboard air, she leans on the wall as she stumbles towards her quarters. She ran until she could drop, barely able to stand in the shower afterwards, because that way maybe she can sleep. Chris had an EVA today, she can't expect him to come by after such a long day, just to keep her company in the dark. 

It was Christmas two days ago, and their Commander acknowledged CAPCOM's cheery little greeting, but first she sat them all down and asked how much of a celebration they all wanted. No one felt particularly festive, even Rick; they all tuned to look at him, willing to celebrate for his sake, but he just shook his head, without even making a joke. That night when Beth slipped into Chris's quarters he compared the general gloom to "the year my grandmother and Aunt Michelle crashed on their drive up," and when he described his and his sister's attempts to cheer their parents up with breakfast and carols in bed, Beth reached out to squeeze his hand. He smiled at her and as she smiled back she realized it was her first smile that day. Maybe the last few days, or longer.

That's the effect Chris has on her, Beth thinks as she wobbles towards her room. They've all drawn closer, as a crew, as friends, but she finds herself especially seeking Chris out, and he looks for her too. She's figured out how to keep the sensors from registering their movements as they sneak to each other's quarters, just to talk, just to sit together, sometimes to cry together, especially in the first few weeks after they left Mars. It's been almost two months now, and Beth is deliberately not thinking about where this thing with Chris might go, if anywhere. Right now she's thinking about the moment. That's all anyone has, each given moment. If she learned anything on Mars, she learned that.

Iif they're caught, it could probably create an 'appearance of impropriety', as the regs warned, especially those nights where one of them sleeps in the other's bedside chair. Beth no longer fucking cares. She's already on this mission and Mark is _dead_ and her priorities reshuffled as she sobbed the whole way up from Mars's surface. Spending as much time as possible with her crewmates climbed up as caring about appearances fell down. Spending time with Chris tops the list. 

Now she opens her door and finds him sitting on her bunk, hands in his lap, just waiting for her. "Chris," Beth exhales, too happy for surprise, too exhausted for excitement.

He holds up his arm and she limps over and drops against his warm solid side, wrapping hers around his waist, comforted by his physical presence. "Beth," he murmurs, his breath stirring her hair. "Hey. You okay?"

"Went running," she answers, brief and unimportant. "Aren't you tired? Your EVA?"

"Couldn't sleep." he hugs her with both arms, with blanketing strength. "I just -- it was a tricky fix, and the whole time I just kept wanting--" his voice cracks, her eyes ache. "Just wanted to ask -- his voice hitches, he turns his head and presses his cheek to her hair as a shudder goes through him.

It hits like this sometimes. Chris is the person who explained it to her, better than her college psych course ever did. Beth clings to Chris as he shakes and swallows and gets himself together. "I know," she murmurs. They all miss Mark, their engineer, their crewmate, their friend. 

Chris nods, snuffling, lifting a hand to his face. Beth leans forward to grab the washcloth she's learned to keep by her bed, but when she turns back to Chris his eyes are huge, big and transparently dark as space all around them, and his lips are parted just enough to show how full and soft they are, and Beth wants so intensely it hurts. She wants to soothe his sadness, to feel the life in him reinforcing hers. 

She gets up on her knees and kisses him, and he grips her shoulders and pulls her into it, kissing her back with that warm soft mouth. They tilt to each other, pressing closer, and Beth feels the very tip of his tongue flex against the seam of her lips, parts them and lets him in, a smooth thick caress. He tastes good, warm and alive, and she grabs his shirt and pushes up for more with all the sudden energy surging under her skin.

Chris shudders, and gasps, and lets go like her skin burned him. Beth falls back, worry chill and heavy in her chest as she suddenly thinks of the line she just obliterated. "Oh," Chris breathes, "Oh my God, I'm sorry, Beth, I didn't come here to, I didn't mean..."

Beth shuts her eyes and asks herself the question, opens them to look up into Chris's eyes, and tells them both the answer. "I did," she says. "I -- I'm sorry, I should have asked first, I shouldn't've done it now, we're both worn out. But I meant it. Chris." His name in her mouth tastes like his kiss, tastes like what she wants. "I meant to kiss you."

Chris smiles. Chris smiles wide and bright, like he hasn't since they left Mars. "I meant it too. I mean, not the -- you're right, it's not the best time, we're both exhausted, but -- Beth. I want -- I want this. With you."

"Me too," she says, and his fingers find hers, their four hands fold together into one tight grip. "With you."

Chris opens his mouth to say something, and yawns, and Beth has to giggle. The laugh feels unfamiliar, welcome, something she's been missing. Chris's hands around hers feel familiar, comfortable, something she didn't even know she was missing. The pressure in her chest unfolds into lightness, into hope. Maybe more.

She yawns too, ducking her head, and Chris chuckles. "Yeah. We should try to do this like actual adults, I guess. Talk about it. After we get some sleep."

"Do you still want the chair?" Beth asks, and Chris looks at it, and back at her, and shakes his head, still smiling. "Come on, then." She lies down, and after a beat he lies down with her, and they've hugged each other so many times since they left Mars, but never lying down. Never in bed together, before.

Never apart now, a tiny wild hope flickers in her heart, which she's not about to voice. But her head fits under Chris's chin, his arms fit around her waist, she hasn't been so comfortable in a very long time.

"I've wanted this," Chris murmurs. "For a long long time. I didn't want -- I value you, Beth. I want you to know that. I don't just want to get laid. I want you."

Beth's cheeks warm to heat, her tired blood rushes in her ears. "But you do want to get laid."

Chris makes a little choked noise. "I said that, didn't I," he asks himself. "Yeah, I... if you want."

"I want," Beth murmurs into the crook of Chris's throat, nestling her face into the warm rich scent of him, the firm corded strength and fine-textured skin. "I want you."

Chris sighs, long and relieved, deflating to ease in her arms. "I've wanted you. I told Mark all about wanting you. He teased the hell out of me."

Beth can picture it, Mark's sideways grin, Chris's abashed smile. Her heart aches, but it's bittersweet. "You should've told me."

"Yeah, I should've," he agrees, lifting his head a little, just enough to look at her. Just enough to lean in for another kiss, almost chaste but warmly promising, before he drops his head again. "But here we are," he says, like he did when they stood together on Mars.

"Here we are," Beth echoes, tucking her face back into Chris's neck, and that's how they fall asleep.

4) [Author's Note: This chapter quotes the book, but all you need should be here in context.]

When Beth sidles into Chris's room he's sitting on his bed, apparently naked with a pillow and his computer piled in his lap as he laughs his head off. Beth smiles in delight as she watches Chris chuckle, the screen's light gleaming electric blue from his eyes, and strips to match, dropping her clothes by the door where she can find them in the morning.

"Listen to what Mark wrote me," he tells her. " _Now that I'm in a 'dire situation,' I don't have to follow social rules anymore. I can be honest with everyone. Bearing that in mind, I have to say... dude... you need to tell Johanssen how you feel. If you don’t, you’ll regret it forever._. He's so fucking full of himself," Chris concludes fondly.

"Total renaissance man, our Watney," Beth agrees as she sits beside Chris. "Engineering, botany, matchmaking." She leans into his side, facing away from his screen. "On the other hand at least he didn't call you a nerd and offer to give you a wedgie."

"A _wedgie_?" Chris asks wide-eyed, with hilarious mock horror. "If he tries you have my permission to flip him into the wall."

"Thank you but I don't need your permission," Beth informs him for as long as she can keep a straight face, before she loses it and cracks up laughing, leaning on Chris. 

He laughs too, kissing her forehead as they sway together, kissing down the bridge of her nose to her mouth, and she tilts her chin up into it for a sweet moment. "I'll have to set his broken bones," Chris murmurs to her, "and worse, listen to him whine."

"Only if you're still his doctor," Beth says, then hears herself. Chris blinks, thinking along the same lines right as she says, "if he makes it back from Mars."

"He will," Chris says with flat conviction, the same way he always talks about their return to Earth as a 'when' rather than an if, and Beth has to glance away, pressing more firmly to his warm side. After they watched the message about the probe's loss they stood frozen, stunned by the impossibility of the situation, until the normally-reserved Alex spoke for all of them with a completely accurate, " _Scheisse_ ". 

She sits silently now, unable to choose between optimism and truth, so it's Chris who says, "I wish we could go back for him."

"Back to Mars?" She looks up at his earnest nod. "Even if we had the supplies NASA would never let us."

"But if we could?" Chris asks, and Beth finds her optimistic truth in his eyes.

"In an instant." She nods, and she knows it's her own honest decision, regardless of the warmth of Chris's smile. But she still basks. "They probably won't let me write and tell him that, though." 

"Yeah, probably not." Chris tucks his arm a little more snugly around her waist.

"Then I'll write him that he'd better stay alive so I can give him that wedgie." Chris snorts, which makes her snicker, and shuts his laptop, which dims the room to only the night lamp. "No more email?"

"I can read email whenever," Chris says as he sets the laptop carefully on the floor. When he turns back his eyes have gone dark and heated, and Beth doesn't care about letters in this moment either. "I only get to stay in bed with you for seven paltry hours," he rumbles, and Beth feels herself warm all over under his hot eyes, from her reddening cheeks downwards. 

"You have a point there," she tells him, as he cups her shoulders in his broad capable hands, as he tugs her arms gently up and winds them around his neck, then skims his hands down to her waist and tugs her closer. As Chris kisses her Beth drops one hand to shift the pillow. 

He really isn't wearing anything under it. Good.

 

5) "All right, everything checks out," Dr. Beck says, and takes a deep breath. "Johanssen, your exam is over," he pronounces. It's almost a ritual by this point. 

Beth relaxes all over and reaches out, and Chris echoes her eager smile as he leans towards her, back to being her Chris again, and gives her a warm little kiss. "Good," she murmurs as she winds her arms around his neck, stealing this moment from everything they have to do, everything they have to be. "Wouldn't do to get sick now, after..."

He kisses her again and she trails off into a hum, buzzing through their lips, so he finishes for her, "...after all we've been through," wrapping his arms around her waist, stepping forward so she can hitch her knees up and cross her ankles behind his back. The exam table presses hard beneath her up-tilted hips, and they really shouldn't make out in the medbay, but the trip's been filled with so much they shouldn't have done, from admitting their feelings to each other to the Rich Purnell maneuver which took them back to Mars, to every single night, and stolen moments during the day, they've spent in each other's arms. Beth hugs Chris with all four limbs and kisses him slow and deep and hot, tasting him thoroughly, defying each and every shouldn't, and anyone who might come through the door.

Chris makes a surprised little throaty noise that slides into a moan, and another, before he pulls back gasping. "Wha," he starts, his mouth red and wet and Beth so wishes they had time for more, "what was that for?"

Because he's so handsome, Beth could say, as she frames his face between her hands. Because she spent the whole exam hot all over as he poked and prodded and clinically examined her, because his very doctorly professionalism drives her crazy in the best way. Because she loves him, because he loves her, because she could. Instead of saying any of these, Beth lightly kisses Chris and answers, "For being you."

Chris smiles, between her hands, wide and bright across his face. "I'll have to be me as hard as I can, then, if you kiss me like that for it."

Beth could say she knows just what Chris could do as hard as he can, because she's spent too much time in a tin can with Mark and Rick and their terrible senses of humor. Instead she remembers her plan for this moment, with 19 days to Earth and each more packed than the last. "I've been meaning to tell you something," she says, looping her arms easily around Chris's neck, watching his brow furrow as his eyebrows lift. "Before we get home. But we keep falling asleep at night."

"That's kind of what nights are for," Chris says, "even for nocturnal hacker goddesses."

Beth blushes hard and hides her face in his shoulder, muttering, "JFC," as he chuckles. "And stop distracting me. I should tell you ... I froze some eggs before we left."

"Wow," Chris murmurs, and she looks up at him again. "That's pretty forward thinking."

It's still a little disconcerting, and really delightful, to be the focus of his approval. "Yeah, well, after I learned about the radiation load from space travel... I thought maybe I didn't need to haul all my genetic material through it."

"Actually..." Chris tightens his arms just a little around her waist. "Great minds think alike, I guess. I froze some sperm, too, back when I applied for candidacy."

"Oh you did, huh?" Beth pokes him in the chest, between those broad pecs hidden under his regulation long-sleeved shirt, as her heart lifts like it's immune to gravity, as the future unfurls before her like it did did the day she realized she could go to space. "I bet it was so hard, thinking of pretty people and whacking off into a cup. Much worse than two months of scheduled injections and not-so-minor surgery."

"You got me there," Chris agrees easily, and Beth couldn't stop smiling if she had any reason to try. He reaches up to gather a few stray wisps of her hair and smooth them back, caressing her temple, her cheek, her chin. She turns her face into his touch, kissing the heel of his hand, feeling him warm and solid between her legs, under her hands, everywhere they touch.

Then he blinks, and she watches a thought ripple across his face. "That's everything, then, isn't it?" Chris says, and Beth's almost too busy watching his mouth move to bother being puzzled. "We can get a place together and ask the Commander to marry us and have a baby and a future together. A life together." He smiles at her like it would be the best thing on Earth.

Because it would be. It absolutely would be, but before Beth says so, a plan pops into her head. "Just one thing, though," she says, glancing away like she's thinking it over. Chris gets those adorable forehead-wrinkles again, watching her intently, waiting for her to continue, for her answer.

She unhooks her ankles, pulls her legs in and plants her feet between his, and stands up. He reflexively steps back, giving her enough room to slide to her knees, and she manages it pretty gracefully, all things considered. "Doctor Christopher Beck," Beth says, laying her empty hands on his thighs, "will you marry me?"

Chris's eyes shine bright and blue, he grins in openmouthed astonishment. "Beth! I -- yes, fuck yes, of course yes!" He grabs her arms and pulls her up, off the floor, off her feet, lifting her over his head like she hardly weighs anything, even though they're up to full gravity. "Beth Johanssen," Chris tells her, holding her in midair like she's floating, "I will definitely marry you."

He kind of half-lowers, half-drops her on his face, but Beth more than doesn't mind. She wraps herself around Chris and he kisses all her breath out and back in again. Eventually, much too soon, he tips her back onto the exam table, pulling his hands off her, and presses them to the wall either side of her shoulders as the kiss breaks. "Oh God," he gasps, "you'd better --"

"Yeah," she agrees, just as breathlessly, prying herself away, backing off the table's far side. A step, another, and she can't bear not to turn back enough to reach out just one hand.

Chris wraps his fingers around hers. "We're doing this?" he asks, eyes wide and luminous.

"We are absolutely doing this," Beth assures him, tells herself, informs the universe, as their fingers tighten around each other like they both want to entangle their entire bodies, like their futures are now intertwined.

They hang on for a long, long, lovely moment before they let go.

 

+1)

This time the code runs perfectly, and as Beth smiles in triumph she feels the strain across her shoulders from leaning in so close. She sits up and reaches overhead, stretching out her back until the tension eases and fades, and breathes deep and controlled, seven in, eleven out, refreshing her body after spending so long in the coding groove.

A soft deep snore overlaps with a slightly higher, more jagged one, and Beth glances over, away from the computer on her lap, towards the living room rug. Chris lies sprawled on his back, Lou tucked into the crook of his arm, Mark curled on his side facing them, one arm thrown out almost parallel to Chris's. Her husband and their baby and their pet astronaut asleep on the floor, waiting for her to finish that last bit of code.

Beth looks at them all, sleeping there beside her, for a long, warm, happy moment. Then she saves her work one more time, stands up and stretches out every kink, sets her computer on the side table and shuts it for the night as she turns towards her family, her past, her present, her future.


End file.
